This article outlines effective strategies to enhance the likelihood of your survey invitations being successfully delivered.
To ensure that your survey invitations meet campus guidelines and reach your survey participants' inboxes, it is important to communicate with your campus' IT department or email system administrator prior to launching the survey. It is crucial to take these steps to avoid any potential issues with emails being blocked or marked as spam. To assist your email system administrator, it is beneficial to furnish them with the following details:
- Benchworks uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host our servers and software. Our IP addresses are: 54.240.121.247 and 54.240.121.248
- We need your campus IT to place our SPF record on your email server to ensure deliverability. The SPF record should include the text: "v=spf1 ip4:54.240.121.247 ip4:54.240.121.248"
- We can provide a DKIM key upon request
- Use our new feature Generate Single Survey Link so you can distribute to your students on your own using your campus email system, text message, QR code, LMS, or any other platform
- Enter our email wess@webebi.com as the "From" Email Name on your Invitation and Reminder emails during setup
- Dates you have chosen for sending your invitation and reminder emails and also the subject line
Your email system administrators can use this information to make necessary adjustments to their spam software in order to allow messages from our IP address or email address to be successfully delivered. Additionally, it is important to monitor the status of your survey on the day it is launched to determine if any emails were not delivered or returned. If you encounter any issues with email deliverability, please reach out to support. They can assist you in implementing a DKIM key or SPF (Sender Policy Framework), or both, to ensure that your survey invitations reach your participants' inboxes successfully.
What is SPF?
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email-authentication technique which is used to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. With SPF an organization can publish authorized mail servers. Together with the DMARC related information, this gives the receiver (or receiving systems) information on how trustworthy the origin of an email is. SPF is, just like DMARC, an email authentication technique that uses DNS (Domain Name Service). This gives you, as an email sender, the ability to specify which email servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
We need your IT to place our SPF on your server to ensure deliverability. The SPF record should include the text: "v=spf1 ip4:54.240.121.247 ip4:54.240.121.248"
What is DKIM?
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is an email authentication technique that allows the receiver to check that an email was indeed sent and authorized by the owner of that domain. This is done by giving the email a digital signature. This DKIM signature is a header that is added to the message and is secured with encryption.
Once the receiver (or receiving system) determines that an email is signed with a valid DKIM signature, it’s certain that parts of the email among which the message body and attachments haven’t been modified. Usually, DKIM signatures are not visible to end-users, the validation is done on a server level.
Implementing the DKIM standard will improve email deliverability. If you use a DKIM record together with DMARC (and even SPF) you can also protect your domain against malicious emails sent on behalf of your domains. Though, in practice these goals are achieved more effectively if you use the DKIM record together with DMARC (and even SPF). DMARC and DMARC Analyzer use both SPF and DKIM. Together they provide synergy and the best result for email security and deliverability.
DKIM is available upon request by contacting support. Please include the domain name (i.e. elentra.com, msu.edu, etc.) and we will generate a DKIM key for you and send it back to you via email.
The DNS server needs this text record published with the DKIM selector as the hostname, and the key as a single text record. It includes both quoted parts, and they have to be on one line, there is a space between them, not a return.
After you have successfully placed your DKIM key on your DNS server, please inform us by replying to the email that was sent to you. After you have successfully placed your DKIM key on your DNS server, please notify us by replying to the email that was sent to you. We will then verify the placement of the DKIM record and conduct tests from our end to ensure it has been correctly implemented. If our tests indicate that the DKIM key we have implemented matches the one on your side, we will send you a test email. If all tests are satisfactory, we can proceed with your survey.